i knew that he fought for the british, not the americans come and i knew he had gone ahead of america as a whole. i grew up and became a journalist and lived through the war in vietnam which raised a lot of interesting questions about the war and its value, and as i said i became a journalist, and about six years ago i was casting around a look idea -- book idea and it occurred to me i should poke around and see what i learned about my uncle and was a does hero because it looked to me as a child? so i did. the first person i got in touch with was an old family friend named charles mclean who was a retired professor at dartmouth, and to my astonishment i discovered that he had actually spent a day with my uncle on the day that he decided to go to war. it was may 31st, 1931. they were both seniors in college, my uncle with harvard and charnels at dartmouth. they met up at st. paul for what was that schools self important equivalent of what they called home coming into other schools with involved voters and book clubs and lots of races but at that point at the end of may in 1941 what was